Bottom of the barrel. In the small-favors department, at least David E. Sanger's embarrassing piece today, retailing yet another Administration attack on Richard Clarke, didn't make A1 ("Colleague of Ex-Official Disputes Part of Account"). [The A1 honors belong to Philip Shenon and Richard Stevenson, whose half-right, half-incredibly-wrong-and-beside-the-point article I just can't bring myself to bother critiquing. Have we really only been through a week of this nonsense?] Consider this post a form of score-keeping—remember it the next time Sanger (whose faith-based commentary on the Spanish elections I noted here) tries straining credulity.

A senior national security official who worked alongside Richard A. Clarke on Sept. 11, 2001, is disputing central elements of Mr. Clarke's account of events in the White House Situation Room that day, declaring that it "is a much better screenplay than reality was."

The official, Franklin C. Miller, who acknowledges that he was often a bureaucratic rival of Mr. Clarke, said in an interview on Monday that almost none of the conversations that Mr. Clarke, who was the counterterrorism chief, recounts in the first chapter of his book, "Against All Enemies," match Mr. Miller's recollection of events.

Ulp! Am I going to have to revise everything I've thought up to now about Clarke's veracity? Just what "central elements" of his narrative is Mr. Miller disputing?

In Mr. Clarke's account, in a chapter called "Evacuate the White House," he heads into the Situation Room at the first word of attack and begins issuing orders to close embassies and put military bases on a higher level of alert — not the kind of operational details usually handled by the National Security Council staff. He describes how Mr. Miller came into the room, squeezed Mr. Clarke's bicep, and said, "Guess I'm working for you today. What can I do?"

"I wouldn't say that," Mr. Miller said Monday. "I might say, `How can I help.' "

I can't even measure the depth of outrage that Miller must feel at Clarke's mischaracterization of this vital moment in our nation's history. But Sanger's report leaves me a little fuzzy: is Miller disputing the arm-squeeze, too? Because if that one's a lie—by God, I won't rest till I see Richard Clarke tarred and feathered!

And sadly, that's the countercharge that Sanger goes with first. That's as tough and as "central" as it gets. Here's the whimper with which the article ends:

While the book describes the Situation Room as sparsely populated, Mr. Miller and Mr. McCormack ticked off the names of at least a dozen people who came in to work the phones and help figure out the location of suspect aircraft.

Is there anything left to say about this sorry mess? Well, there's the fact that Miller is "a senior aide to Condoleeza Rice," something Sanger just kind of slides in there as an aside in the piece's fifth graf. So he's possibly less than completely motivated by a concern for violated truth. We might also notice that this horseshit occupies two columns, running three-quarters of the page, on A18 (the jump page for the Shenon and Stevenson piece). Think the Times has ever devoted that much space to any of the people who've corroborated Clarke? Or how about that FBI wiretap translator who told Salon's Eric Boehlert that the FBI had "detailed information prior to Sept. 11, 2001, that a terrorist attack involving airplanes was being plotted." Sanger or anybody else at the Times picked up on that yet?

I know ...stupid questions ...

Update (Wednesday 3/31): OK, one thing left to say about this sorry mess is said by antiphone at Enduring Friedman, who finds a reference confirming that David Sanger can't even be bothered to fact-check his stories by researching in his own damn paper ...

posted by michael  6:00:59 PM  
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Somehow, in the midst of all the killing and skin-eating, we forgot the love. Once in a while, it's healthy for my little blog to turn aside from anger and show some appreciation. So let me direct your attention to David Rohde's exemplary feature on A1 today ("G.I.'s in Afghanistan on Hunt, but Now for Hearts and Minds"), a keenly observed, sharply written report of three days spent with an American platoon on a hearts-and-minds mission in Khost Province, on the Pakistan border. Ignore the headline's suggestion that you're in for a steaming helping of infoganda. (I say that because it almost stopped me.) Here's the thematic takeaway:

As the effort to find Osama bin Laden and uproot the Taliban intensifies, the United States military is shifting tactics. A mission once limited to sweeps, raids and searches has in recent months yielded to an exercise in nation building. The hope is that a better relationship with local residents and a stronger Afghan state will produce better intelligence and a speedier American departure. But the tension between building schools one day and rounding up suspects at gunpoint the next makes the prospects for success far from clear. ...

The Americans hope their new approach will pry information about militants from reluctant Afghans. The battle, said Capt. Jason Condrey, Lieutenant Finn's company commander, centers on winning the allegiance of the population, which he called Al Qaeda's "center of gravity."

But the same American troops still use the standard tactics of military power to achieve their aims: intimidation, overwhelming force, hands tied behind backs and faces in the dirt.

Over the course of the three-day patrol, it was not clear whether they had won, or lost, more hearts and minds.

If anything in this suggests the standard, passive, "opinions on the shape of the earth differ" Times middle ground—it shouldn't. Rohde is doing exactly what you want a reporter to do: go someplace you can't, use his senses, talk to people, and come back with a vivid, unspun, un-preconceived rendering of his experience. It's tough to choose anything in the piece to excerpt, but here's a sample, of the end of a weapons raid on the patrol's Day 1:

A 16-year-old named Muhammad Rahman ... was caught in a lie. He told the Americans that he had no weapons, then later showed them where he had hidden two Kalashnikov rifles and a Chinese-made mortar round.

Visibly angry, the Americans tied the teenager's hands, placed a burlap sack on his head and pushed him down a steep hillside. As an American soldier knelt on the boy's back and pushed his face into the dirt, Sergeant Jarzab demanded to know if there were more hidden weapons.

"He's a liar, and he's going to Cuba," the sergeant shouted, although he later ordered the boy freed. The boy insisted he had found the mortar and planned to sell it.

As watching Afghan women wailed and recited prayers, one sergeant placed the mortar round on the teenager's back, and another held the captured rifles in the air. A soldier snapped a souvenir photo of the Americans and their quarry.

After his release, the boy did not complain about his treatment. Instead, as the soldiers stood nearby, he praised the Americans for stabilizing Afghanistan "I am very happy they came," he said. "I just request that they build a school for us."

Great work by Rohde, and fine judgement by the Times: not just in giving this story front-page prominence, but in giving Rohde the latitude to do it in the first place. When so few American news organizations can be bothered even to remember Afghanistan, much less devote real resources to it, this is the kind of thing that makes the strongest argument for the Times' continuing relevance.

posted by michael  3:16:38 PM  
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Assimilated. If you were wondering about an agenda behind the odd appearance on A1, in the same week and under the same byline (Dexter Filkins'), of two leadership-focused puff pieces from Iraq—a long hagiographic treatment of Jerry Bremer's proconsulship that I glanced at a week ago Saturday, followed last Friday by an apparent attempt to polish up the bruised apple of Ahmad Chalabi's reputation—let The Guardian and UPI clue you in, since God knows the Times won't:

The United States will transfer power in Iraq to a hand-picked prime minister, abandoning plans for an expansion of the current 25-member governing council, according to coalition officials in Baghdad.

With fewer than 100 days before the US occupation authorities are due to transfer sovereignty, fear of wrangling among Iraqi politicians has forced Washington to make its third switch of strategy in six months.

The search is now on for an Iraqi to serve as chief executive. He will almost certainly be from the Shia Muslim majority, and probably a secular technocrat.

Jonathan Steel, The Guardian (3/27/04), "US will tell Iraqi council to pick a PM"

With only three months to go before L. Paul Bremer trades in his Iraqi pro-consul baton for beachwear and a hard-earned vacation, the country's most controversial politician is already well positioned to become prime minister.

Ahmad Chalabi, the Pentagon's heartthrob and the State Department's and CIA's heartbreak, has taken the lead in a yearlong political marathon. Temporary constitutional arrangements are structured to give the future prime minister more power than the president. The role of the president will be limited because his decisions will have to be ratified by two deputy presidents, or vice presidents. Key ministries, such as Defense and Interior, will be taking orders from the prime minister.

Chalabi holds the ultimate weapons -- several dozen tons of documents and individual files seized by his Iraqi National Congress from Saddam Hussein's secret security apparatus. Coupled with his position as head of the de-Baathification commission, Chalabi, barely a year since he returned to his homeland after 45 years of exile, has emerged as the power behind a vacant throne. He also appears to have impressive amounts of cash at his disposal and a say in which companies get the nod for some of the $18.4 billion earmarked for reconstruction.

Arnaud de Borchgrave, UPI (3/29/04), "Commentary: Chalabi's road to victory"

[Thanks to Body and Soul for the Guardian link, and to Josh Marshall for the UPI piece.]

Clearly, the fix is in, the Times is aware of it, and our Paper of Record has been preparing the ground, as it were, to make this all seem as plausible as it can.

And by the way, what the hell has happened to Dexter Filkins? Well before I started this blog, and thus before I routinely noticed bylines, I remarked on Filkins (how could I not, with a Dickensian name like that!) as the author of a couple of pull-no-punches reports from the ground in Iraq that seemed unusually sensitive to the way our military presence there was brutalizing both Iraqis and our own soldiers. (Why-War reprints them here, and here: click on the author name to see more of his work, including a tough, skeptical report on the U.S. air war in Afghanistan.) But this same Dexter Filkins swallowed a big one reporting a phony "exclusive" on the infamous Zarqawi letter, and he seems increasingly inclined to lead cheers on behalf of CPA-sponsored events whenever required. These latest two pieces are just the saddest in a lengthening line. Have the Borg assimilated another journalist?

posted by michael  12:26:49 PM  
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